


way up here we explore galaxies

by cloudtalking



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: M/M, Tumblr Prompt, drinking and clubbing, lotsa space metaphors, ya local gay got carried away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 10:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13432734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: for @steampunkburie for the prompt: “we were dancing but all of a sudden it’s a slow song and it’s awkward.”They had three years to become strangers, but eternity to get to know each other again. Carter’s contribution, to no one’s surprise, was going clubbing. Fortunately for him, they were all long tired of arguing over movie night.title from "boy" by willow





	way up here we explore galaxies

**Author's Note:**

> drinking and dancing and space oh my
> 
> (alternate title: space gays)

Kelly was the moon, magnetic and inviting, pulling Robbie in and moving the tides, controlling his world.

 

Kelly was the moon, glowing high in Robbie’s sky, outshining any star.

 

Kelly was so different from his brother, from the stars. Carter was scorching, hot and fiery, dangerous. He made it known to Robbie from when they first met that the second he tried to leave Ox’s gravity, to escape safety and cross the void of space to reach the moon, Carter would burn him to nothing.

 

The Bennett pack was powerful— not just because of their alphas, but because of the pack. Because Thomas Bennett could make speeches that moved mountains, that moved armies, and his betas flashed their teeth when he paused, daring anyone to challenge him.

 

His son didn’t bother with the speeches, didn’t feel the need for pretense. He was a natural disaster; ignoring him would be suicide. His pack was all the army he needed, though he let the others scramble around and pretend. It was the Bennett pack alone that shaped history, that could leave their prints in the fabric of time. Joe’s betas were made of stone and swords, they were unbeatable and unbreakable.

 

Kelly didn’t need his brothers to protect him, even though he had them. Kelly was powerful in his own right, a celestial body with a name and a place in the sky. Robbie was but a human, but a speck of dust on the Earth’s surface. Robbie condemned himself to admiring Kelly from afar, looking to the sky to find him amongst the stars. It was easy to want what he knew he couldn’t have.

 

Robbie was an outsider. A bitten wolf that was sent as a spy. A pariah sent into the land of kings, of gods.

 

He’d thought it would be easier when he arrived, when he knocked on the door of the house at the end of the lane. Alpha Bennett was gone, along with the Livingstone witch and Thomas’s older sons. It should’ve been a simple task, to watch over an alphaless pack. A pack made of two grieving betas and a human. It should’ve been easier.

 

Instead, he came face first with the sun.

 

It was ironic, in that moment. Robbie had walked in believing himself to be the strongest, believing the Bennetts to be in need of protection.

 

Why would the sun need a human? Why would a star need a mortal, someone who would turn to dust long before the sun ever burned out?

 

And even then, the sun would turn to a supernova, would explode in a show of color and take everything out with it.

 

What would a mortal be then? A man against a galaxy of fire and dust?

 

Nothing. Robbie was nothing to the sun, was nothing to Ox, but god did he want to change that.

 

Luckily, the sun has a strong gravity. It was almost too easy for Robbie to join its orbit.

 

Ox pulled in enough people for a good and proper pack, nevermind their status as humans. Ox was more of an alpha than any Robbie had ever met. _Human_ , as Robbie had once defined it, was a relative term.

 

The sun’s gravity was so strong that Robbie got pulled too close and almost got burned.

 

The rejection was polite. It was less of a _never in a million years_ and more of _I’ve already found my soulmate._

 

He should’ve known. No one on Earth would ever be good enough for Oxnard Matheson.

 

Robbie circled the sun for a year before completing his revolution, before meeting the moon.

 

Robbie had never met the current Alpha Bennett, but he knew enough about him to place him easily. Joe Bennett was exactly what an alpha was supposed to be: strong. His eyes glowed with power, but Robbie wouldn’t bow to him. His eyes were blue now, he had someone to follow now, he had someone who didn’t need his protection. Robbie would offer it anyway. However scared of Alpha Bennett Robbie might’ve been, pack came first.

 

He could feel Ox’s anger through the bond they shared, the bond they all shared. The sun’s light was bright enough to reach even the humans of the pack, and right now it was ultraviolet; it was burning _._

 

He reached out to touch the sun, to remind him that exploding would take all of them out with him. Robbie would fight for his alpha, they all would, but he had to ensure he was thinking clearly. Joe’s eyes seemed to glow even brighter at that, seeing Ox’s body go from rigid to relaxed with a touch from his beta.

 

Robbie wanted to gloat— _you left him, he belongs to us now—_ but he knew that wasn’t true.

 

No matter how furious Ox was, no matter how hurt, he still kept Joe’s wolf. That in itself was a glaring mark of his devotion, of his love for the Bennett alpha.

 

With Joe came the others, the witch and the brothers.

 

Gordo Livingstone was a story often told even outside of the Matheson pack. The son of a man so vile even the name was bitter on your tongue. But the boys from the shop told better stories. They spoke of a grouch who took no shit. A man who had a rough exterior, but loved them nonetheless.

 

Mark told stories too, of a teenager who was reckless and wild. Those were less stories and more legends, myths told by mouth and rarely treated as fact. Whoever Gordo had been then had died long before the boys from the shop forced their way into his life.

 

Now he stood before them, tired and desperate. Robbie wondered if the Gordo that belonged to the boys had died as well.

 

The brothers stood on the opposite side of Joe as Gordo, just as worn-out and beaten down.

 

Robbie had heard about them from their mother. Elizabeth had called them rambunctious, had called them wild. She spoke of them like shooting stars, racing across the sky and the house, painting colors along the walls and leaving trails of light behind them.

 

He looked at them now and couldn’t help but wonder if they’d burned out.

 

They clung to each other to preserve the warmth of dying stars, no matter how dull they became. Robbie didn’t know which was which, not yet, but neither seemed ready to separate from the other. They seemed safe as long as they were within one foot of each other. They were anchors with a short chain, keeping each other stable.

 

Ox let them in regardless, feeding them with his light.

 

Even the Bennett pack seemed to be surprised by Ox’s power, as if he hadn’t been like this before they left. As if he hadn’t always been _more._

 

It was rough, the merging of packs, the collision of solar systems. Everything had to be knocked off balance for it to be righted again.

 

The crash was violent, planets breaking apart and meteorites hitting home. Out of the dust came two suns, came new stars and new moons. It was messy, but it was theirs. It wasn’t until the threats to their new union had passed, till the sun nearly went out, that the packs truly tried to merge.

 

They had three years to become strangers, but eternity to get to know each other again. Carter’s contribution, to no one’s surprise, was going clubbing. Fortunately for him, they were all long tired of arguing over movie night.

 

Robbie let himself dance into Kelly’s orbit, bathed in blue and purple lights. Kelly didn’t seem to mind, happy to have company up in the stars.

 

Robbie was bad at dancing, this he knew. The last time he’d tried was senior prom, and even then he’d left early. Kelly turned out not to be amazing either, although Carter moved like water on the dance floor.

 

They were comfortably awkward together, at least. They only rarely stepped on each other’s toes, laughing it off when their clumsy limbs collided as they tried to align their bodies with any sort of rhythm.

 

Then the game changed.

 

The DJ shouted something over the speakers and the roar of the crowd, something about young lovers and his friends out there in the crowd on a date. Then the music changed from a resounding beat, a thrum of energy and bass, to a ballad.

 

All around them, pairs broke off and swayed to the tempo. They were privy to a secret Robbie wasn’t, an ease he’d never know.

 

Kelly’s hand was outstretched, an invitation. Robbie looked at it like it was gold on a platter, like it was too good to be true, like there had to be a catch.

 

“Well?” Kelly prompted, almost annoyed. Robbie wasted no more time after that.

 

It was just as clumsy as before, if not more so with their increased proximity. The mortal flew around the moon and became a satellite, circling and circling until finding a safe place to land.

 

“This isn’t really my scene,” Robbie admitted. Kelly laughed.

 

“That much is obvious,” said the moon. “Don’t worry, I’m not that much of a fan either. I don’t normally like being this close to people if they’re not pack. It makes me anxious.”

 

“Oh.” Robbie’s heart sank.  Of course, the moon didn’t shine on its own. The moon had to have the sun shine a light on him to even reveal himself, however reluctantly. The moon thrived in the dark, knowing who he orbited and who was near as they had been that way for centuries.

 

The moon’s atmosphere alone wasn’t enough to protect it from meteorites, from uninvited guests crashing into its surface, from Robbie’s arms around him. Robbie pulled away instantly.

 

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to make you feel like you have to--”

 

Kelly grabbed his arms, pulled him closer, the force of his gravity getting stronger.

 

“I don’t mind it so much right now,” Kelly admitted. “Not so long as it’s you.”

 

Slow lights washed over them, spinning in the cosmos. The satellite entered the moon’s atmosphere and touched home smoothly, without hurt.

 

Rocking back and forth like the tide, he was pulled along by the moon. They’d reached perihelion, waves growing to the size of mountains.

 

Robbie was content to let himself drown in it. The scent of sweat and alcohol oozed from every corner of the club, but right now they were separate from it all. Together, they had formed a new world that was strong enough to block everyone else out.

 

Kelly’s smile was the sun, his breath was the breeze, his voice birthed life onto the hills and sent it running over every mountain and plain.

 

The music changed back to techno pop and bass drops so loud they shook the building, but Robbie and Kelly stayed in their world.

 

They danced into the witching hours, laughing at their own pathetic attempts at rhythmic motion. They blended in well with their drunk pack mates, off-beat and graceless.

 

They were the only ones sober enough to drive the lot home in the morning, only reaching the house at the end of the lane once the sun had passed the moon in the sky.

 

“I had fun tonight,” Kelly grinned, and Robbie let himself be blinded.

 

“Me, too.” It was a simple world for all he’d felt. He was overflowing and bursting at the seams with all that burned inside him.

 

They found their ways back to their respective rooms with dragging feet and tired eyes, holding up the unsteady forms of their packmates as they attempted to get around.

 

When Robbie could finally retire to his room, could finally be back in his lonely orbit, he didn’t mourn the loss. He closed his eyes and dreamt of the moon.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading! I hope u liked it!


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